Month: October 2013

My 7th graders recently spent some time trying to figure out the difference between “because ______” and “because OF _____” in preparation for their midterm tests. It caused a whole lot of consternation, even though the answer is fairly straightforward and easy to follow.

Simply, “because [reason]” is used to introduce a secondary clause; while “because of [reasons]” is used, like prepositions do, with noun phrases.

“I can’t go tonight because I have too much homework.”

“I can’t go tonight because of work.”

Simple.

Unfortunately, 7th graders have a hard time understanding the difference between Independent Clauses and Noun Phrases (Hell, I had trouble with the idea of verbs in 7th grade). So it can actually be more tricky than normal to explain at times. But since I don’t actually teach grammar, this responsibility mostly fell on the shoulders of my co-teacher.

However, it took almost everything I had to not teach the kids my favorite grammatical structure, which completely breaks this rule.

It’s an emerging usage that I’m sure really annoys a lot of people, but I just can’t get enough of it. It think it’s funny in almost any situation. Twitter is abuzz with this usage, here are some examples.

As you can see from the examples, the usage doesn’t exactly replace the “because of” structure. Instead, it carves out it’s own little category within. “Because reasons” is used to exaggerate the meaningfulness of the reasons. Something like,

“I can’t go tonight (and it should be completely obvious why that I’m not even going to waste my time explaining) because reasons.”

Or, it used when there really aren’t any reasons, but the speaker wants to promote their proposition anyway, like this example:

However, because the “because reasons” structure is used either jovially or emphatically, it can be misused, particularly in situations when stating the reason is actually necessary. Take this example:

Notice that the writer actually then produces the reasons for disagreement. The “because reasons” usage feels out of place. Which is not to say it is ungrammatical. It seems as grammatical as any other use, it just feels less appropriate, or at least less funny.

The grammar of “because reasons” involves the adverbial conjunction “because” changing its part of speech into a preposition. This is actually more interesting than it sounds, as it is not everyday that a new word becomes a preposition. Language mavens may lament what they call “Zombie nouns”, but the truth is, one of the beautiful facts of English that words can move in and out of certain categories (like nouns to verbs, or vice versa). But not all word categories easily do so. Prepositions are one such category.

In the “apartment” I live, I fit: a bed, fridge, closet, TV, a small folding table, kitchen area and a bathroom with a washer all in a smaller space than my room in my parent’s home. It’s small.

No bother. I do not demand much else than what I have, though it would be nice to have room for company. What I have in place of room, are white walls and one picture of my family. I have facebook also, of course, which offers as many pictures and opportunities to communicate as I’d like. But I only have one real picture, that I can feel with my fingers; and no room for chairs, that can be occupied by a companion.

While the white walls, on one hand, can drive a person crazy; they can also narrow my focus onto what it is I am striving to do here in Korea. I have little room, literally, for distractions. I don’t even have room for a bookcase, in the event that I decide to forget the harsh realities of Northern South Korea and lose myself in fantasy and abstractions.

The white walls though, they do not keep the loneliness out . There is always a window through which I see both opportunities gone by or not yet realized. Some of which are fantasy, some of which are potential. As focused as I try to be, it is hard to not find myself looking out the window at times.

“So why do you stay? How can you stand it?”

I am asked that a lot. In part because I am a habitual complainer, but also because people recognize the difficulty of the situation. And not everyone would trade places with me. My answers are rarely satisfying to others and I imagine I don’t paint the most beautiful picture of this lived experience.

Robin Williams has shown me how I want to answer that question though. In the movie, Dead Poets Society there is a short, seemingly unimportant scene (so much so that I am having trouble finding it on youtube) where Neil comes to Mr. Keating for help dealing with his father. While Keating makes some tea, Neil says, looking a picture of a beautiful woman playing the chello on Mr. Keatings desk:

“She’s pretty.”

“She’s also in London. Makes it a little difficult.”

“How can you stand it?”

“Stand what?”

“You can’t go anywhere. You can’t do anything. How can you stand being here?”

“’Cause I love teaching. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

The last line is deftly delivered. It is pointed, quick and obvious. There is no thinking; teaching is fundamental to Mr. Keating. Most, if not all, teachers understand that phrase, “I love teaching”. Not many of us got into this profession for the love of something else.

But it is the second sentence, that answers Neil’s question. I don’t want to be anywhere else. What does Keating want? Before this moment, it’s not even a question on our minds. His wants outside of teaching are obscured. But in this scene, Keating is someone with love and a life outside of the private school he teaches at. With a life outside the cramped office and white walls that keep him focused on his work. “It is a little difficult” is said modestly.

— This scene starts with Mr. Keating sitting at his desk, working, but not focused. He keeps looking at the picture of the woman on his desk.

Not too long ago, I was made aware of an interesting linguistic phenomenon involving the Korean kinship term, “hyung” (형). Usually, this term is used only between younger males and their older brothers/close friends as an honorific term. But it seems that some, college-aged, women are also calling their older male friends “hyung.”

Despite the insistence of some on the internet that this does not happen, or that it is simply a fluke or a speech-error, I have witnessed half a dozen or so instances of this phenomenon. And while many people simply have no interest in the subject or want to down-play its role in the Korean language, as an amateur linguist I am very interested in the socio-linguistic motivations for women to use ‘hyung’ instead of ‘oppa’.

Scholarly information seems to be limited on the subject and because I am not an expert in Korean linguistics or sociology, my ability to accurately describe the situation is no better than most of the ignorant masses on the internet. Which, by the way, includes¸ many average Korean people. So, with that, here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1) This linguistic act is mostly used by the 18-30 demographic. It is possible that older speakers use it to an extent, and perhaps younger speakers use to some extent. (though the little data I *have* collected suggests that people younger than college-age do not use this term).

It could be that this is necessarily an 18-30 linguistic feature. And not a linguistic change occuring in the 18-30 demographic. Which would mean that as the women who are currently 18-30, leave their 30s, they may abandon the use of “hyung”. This would suggest the usage is specific to a certain group or register. As the photos show, it is considered a “university” usage. It could also be that as the 18-30 women age, they will continue to use it, marking a broader linguistic change.

2) This linguistic change is being led by women and is above the level of conscious-awareness. Here, we are specifically talking about the use of ‘hyung’ by women (which is really the only interesting usage). But it is also possible that ‘onni’ could be used by men to describe older women, or in some other fashion. As of yet, however, the only data I have seen suggests only women are making the kinship gender switch. It will be interesting to see, in the future, whether or not all men, or some subgroups of men, make a similar kinship-term switch.

In conjunction with reason (3), this change comes “from above”, meaning it comes from a dominant social class (the middle), appears in careful speech (meaning, speakers choose overtly to say it) and is driven by extra-linguistic factors.

3) This linguistic change is happening mostly in the middle-class. An interesting part of this phenomenon is that is it popularly acknowledged as something that happens in Korean universities. Suggesting that both before and after university, women are not expected or it is not considered appropriate for women to call older men, ‘hyung’. This is a very tenuous hypothesis at this point, I’m basing it mostly under the assumption that those people who are attending Korean Universities are mostly middle-upper classes, and then making a guess that upper-class women don’t use ‘hyung’ for older men based on the idea that they have little need for social mobility, as they are already on top.

It would be interesting to see whether or not this linguistic change is more popular at less-prestigious universities or technical schools, where there are fewer of the upper-class attending.

This point, if true, is interesting in that it might suggest something about how women use ‘hyung’ as social capital.

To conclude, I invite any native speaker with anecdotes or other information, intuitions, to leave me a message somewhere, in the comments if you wish. It would be very helpful to me. If anyone knows any scholarly work that I get a hold of, I would love that. And, of course, if you think I’m wrong about any of these hypothesizes, correct me!

For those unaware of what I mean by “deflecting questions”, I mean the teaching technique of not immediately answering a question that is asked in your classroom. Traditionally, in a teacher-centered, expert/novice teaching setting, the teacher is considered the knower-of-things and the students are the sponges, there to soak up the knowledge of the knower. It follows, in traditional teaching, that if a question is to be answered at all, it would of course be done by the knower.

With the shift from teacher-centered classrooms to student or subject-centered classrooms, the idea of the teacher being the only “expert” is also in question. For most questions asked in a classroom, it is more than likely that a student is also a knower–of-things. Or at least, as a collective, the class may be able to come to some realization of the answer.

My experience in this classroom has strongly suggested that I work in a teacher-centered, expert/novice, knower-of-things/sponge class setting. Which can feel like being in a time-machine. However, simply forcing a subject-centered approach on the class is not always greeted warmly by the students. They have been conditioned to learn in a certain way, and it involves having an expert lead the class– It is comforting to think someone in the classroom knows what they are doing– And at times, a redirected question back to them will be met with silence.

As a skill, however, deflection has a few great benefits, particularly in a language class.

1) First, if students are actively asking you questions in class; congratulations! That sort of classroom participation is not always achieved everywhere. And congratulations to your students, who are probably very bright.

2) Now that you’ve been asked, and deflected a question in the target language¸ the class now has more opportunity to use the target language in an authentic situation!

3) Since the question came from a peer, often the class is much more interested in hearing an answer to the question. At the very least, they are very interested in how you, the teacher, will handle the question as a template for future question/answers.

4) Because the question came from a peer, students will be motivated to participate, either out of perceived cooperation or competition.

5) By deflecting, you show the students that you value their thoughts, even if their thinking is flawed, illogical or irrational. As a teacher, you can guide the students through their own confusion, without necessarily having to point the fact of it out to them.

— Now, certainly deflecting questions in an ESL setting where you as the teacher do not speak the students’ language is a difficult task. Often times even if I did answer a question, it still isn’t understood by the students. Which is really only more reason to deflect the question back to the students, who, if they have a good answer, are better suited (knowing both Korean and some English) to help the question-asker to learn.

To finish, I’ll show an example of this that commonly happens in my classroom.

My students love spelling. They love it and fear it. It is a cause of much anguish to have to write for some of them. So a common question that I get asked is “how do you spell ________?” This question is not one of those great mind-bending, paradigm-shifting moments. But it is an easy opportunity to deflect and get the class to participate in constructing and navigating English. Especially since spelling is, apparently to some, so “random”.

So instead of answering, I might ask, “Hmm.. well, what do you think?” and then ask, “any other ideas?” even if they get it right. Then maybe ask the class,
“Student X has a question, how do you spell _________?”
“ok, any other ideas?”
“Why spell it ______ instead of _____?”
— It is here that I could answer it, being the authority in the classroom. But it is also an opportunity to teach the students how to discover resources, like a dictionary. So, instead, I might say,
“Let’s look it up! Looks like it is spelled __________.”

You can even make a game of this, asking for bets on which spelling they think is correct. Any single question, even a simple spelling question can go as deep or as shallow as you have time for. There certainly are times when I will simply give the student the correct spelling, but if I can, I try to give them much more.